El Mac continues to paint murals around the world, this time getting down in Montreal. If you haven’t been to Montreal, it is definitely a great city to see graffiti, street art, and mural art. The city is covered, one of the most covered in North America. And they have good food there.
Mac said about the piece: “This one’s titled ‘Spirit of Summer’ and was my expression of the vitality you can feel this time of year there. Montreal is one of my favorite cities, and it seems to hold a unique creative energy.”
This is a few months old now, but we like these pieces that Mac created for the Public Provocations show at the Carhartt Gallery during Ar tBasel, Swizterland. The centerpiece was called “Portrait of a Dying Cockroach.”
You really can’t get much better in the mural game than these two, Mac and Retna. This is a new mural they put up on the corner of 7th and Park View west of downtown in Los Angeles. Go see it.
We know that El Mac did the world tour this past year (2010 that is), and he just posted this video of his trip to Singapore and all that he painted while there. Pretty inspirational if you ask us.
We love the tagline on this video from the good people of Viet Nam The World: “El Mac joins Viet Nam The World in Singapore and doesn’t get taken away by Singaporean police for public artwork!”
We had a show with El Mac at our FIFTY24SF Gallery in 2009, and we always like to see artists we have worked with go around the world and push their work further, and El Mac’s year in 2010 makes us proud to have collaborated with him.
Our good friend Mac, or El Mac for those of you that need the El in front of the Mac, just painted this mural in Campeche, Mexico for the Seres Queridos project. Mac painted Manuel Lee Chang, known locally as “el Chino”(despite the fact that he’s of Korean descent) with his Guacamaya (Macaw).
I thought this would be an interesting and important image to paint because it shows a blending of cultures. Anybody familiar with me or my work may have realized that this is an important theme for me. The Asian community in Mexico is not really that visible, and I thought it would be interesting to show Manuel with his Guacamaya, as these birds are very representative of that region. The photo at the end is from when Manuel, his bird, and his family came to see me goodbye at the airport, which I really appreciated.
Mac made his rounds this summer, and one stop was the Viet Nam The World in Singapore, and somehow he doesn’t get taken away by Singaporean police for public artwork…
Our friend El Mac has an exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City opening this October 14th, called The Humble and Sublime. The Citrus Report interviewed the man this past year, but we’re pumped to see the new work from the show as it appears. Check out some stuff he’s done with us in the past here.
Mac and Retna got down with this new mural in Culver City, titled Of Our Youth. You can see it on the side of Graphaids art supply store, on La Cienega. And they made a short video for the piece, as it hold a bit of significance because it is based on a man that Retna and Mac met on Skid Row when painting there earlier this year. The man’s name was Ralph Woodruff aka Chato.
Mac continues his summer road trip stories, this time in Vietnam, where he went to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City to paint as part of the Viet Nam the World Tour. He painted this mural near the front of Sán Art independent artist space and the offices of the Propeller Group in the Binh Thanh district. It’s based on a photo Mac took of my girlfriend’s grandmother, Kosoom.
Mac also painted this piece at a hip-hop event, using local paint called “Red Fox”. Check out the nice Mac x Upper Playground tee up there. And the piece right above here is a painting of Mac, done by a Vietnamese writer named Hoang, who came down from Hanoi (Northern Viet Nam) to paint. Awesome stuff.
